Artist in Residence

Apr 1 – Apr 30, 2004

Artist in Residence: Earthwork. The first idea of this project is to create a video installation about shortcut and Sisyphean action. I want to film two sequences in opposite space (in this case it could be Vancouver and Quebec or North Pole and South Pole, I haven’t decide yet, I’m working on that and let you know by the beginning of March). After I want to link these two sequences elliptically by a laborious action. This action consist to dig a hole in the earth (or in the snow) in a landscape to get out after this big effort in the heart of a snowy landscape, suggesting a long time and a lot of kilometers. Suggested only by a temporal ellipse with the help of the editing and by my physical presence in the two sequences, the performance can only exist by an editing effect. The image is the only place where the performance exists. It is not only documentation neither a special effect. It is different than my previous productions, and this realisation should bring me to more complexities in my approach of video-performance.

Julie-Christine Fortier is born in Sherbrooke (Quebec) in 1973. She graduated with a MFA in Visual Arts from the University of Quebec in Montreal in 2000. She lives in France since 2001 in a City of Rennes artist studio.

Her interest in playing and action is in keeping with the performance art tradition which she reinterprets through its modes of representation (video, installation, photography). Using various low tech solutions, she challenges the integrity of her image and her physical resistance within absurd situations which are derived from the comic cruelty of cartoons and burlesque cinema.

Since 1998, she has exhibited her installation works in North America and France. Her video works have been presented in numerous festivals, events and exhibitions such as Single Channel at the Blaffer Gallery (Houston,USA), Ivry-sur-Seine (France), Trames horizontales / deafilement vertical in the Museum of Quebec (Canada). Her Julie in the Box video receive a mention at the second edition of the Young Quebec Artist Triennial and Mechanical Rodeo was awarded in three European festivals in France, Italy and Russia.